An Ethiopian FeastI love ethnic foods, because they're so varied and unique, and best of all, they usually are so robustly flavorful without needing to resort to unhealthy artificial ingredients. Best of all, they're usually cheap, and, if you chose a style of cooking that has a similar climate to where you live, you're usually able to get all the needed ingredients easily because they're locally grown.
I'm making an Ethiopian style feast for my family. The basis for every Ethiopian meal, pretty much, is a spongy fermented flatbread made with fermented teff, an Ethiopian grain. The food is served directly onto this injera. You tear off pieces of the flatbread, roll up the food inside it, and pop it in your mouth- no utensils needed!
For our feast, I'm serving a chicken dish called Doro Wat. It has 33 ingredients, 28 of them being spices. (That is the red stuff on the left in the picture above.) I'm also serving foraged wild mustard with nitter kibbeh style spices (bottom), aleecha vegetable stew (right), and Ethiopian ful medames (mashed spiced broad beans). The food is absolutely delicious, as well as fun to eat.
I wanted to share this recipe with you for making your own injera. Its mock injera, really, because teff is more expensive than wheat, and because I didn't feel like letting it ferment as is usually done. The end result resembles lahooh (alternatively spelled laxoox or lahoh), a Yemenite/Somalian flatbread whose recipe I've shared in the past, but this is yeast free and lighter than lahooh. I suggest doubling this recipe because it'll be devoured in no time.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 scant tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 - 2 1/2 cups seltzer/soda water
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
Oil
Instructions:
1. Mix together all the ingredients aside for the oil. Use a whisk to make sure there's no clumping. You want the dough to be a runny pancake batter consistency.
2. Rub a non stick skillet with oil, making sure not to use too much.
3. Pour 1/2 a cup of batter into the skillet, tilting the pan until it is entirely covered by a thin layer of batter.
4. Cook on a medium heat until the entire thing is cooked. It should be covered by many bubbles, change color, with the edges starting to to pull away from the sides.
5. Carefully slip a spatula under and remove the injera.
6. Repeat with all, and then serve topped with many foods.
Enjoy!
Have you ever eaten Ethiopian food before? Would you be adventurous enough to try it?
What's your favorite type of ethnic food to make?
Linking up to Frugal Foods Thursday.